When Breath Becomes Air

Title: When Breath Becomes Air
Author: Paul Kalanithi, Lucy Kalanithi
Published: January 12, 2016 by Random House
Format: Kindle, 208 and Pages
Genre: Memoir

Blurb: At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both—now with an epilogue by Lucy Kalanithi.

My Opinion: When Breath Becomes Air is exactly what it promises to be: a memoir written by a dying surgeon who loved learning, but loved language even more. And honestly, thank goodness for the Kindle dictionary, because Paul Kalanithi’s vocabulary is… a lot. You can feel the literature, poetry, and philosophy woven through every page; sometimes beautifully, sometimes in ways that sailed right over my head.

The book is brief, divided into the before, the during, and an epilogue written by his wife, Lucy. It’s emotional without being manipulative, heartfelt without being sentimental, and full of the kinds of messages you don’t realize you need until they’re suddenly sitting in your lap. The clinical precision of a neurosurgeon meets the vulnerability of a man trying to make sense of a life that’s ending far too soon.

I’ll admit, the more academic passages weren’t for me. But when Paul writes about his patients, his colleagues, his wife, his daughter, those moments glow. That’s where the book truly breathes. You can feel the love, the fear, the clarity, the tenderness. You can feel the man.

And yes, I know memoirs often give us the polished pieces and cast off the parts the writer wants to leave behind. I’m sure there were darker moments—anger, doubt, frustration—that didn’t make it onto the page. But if Paul chose to leave us with grace, curiosity, and a sense of a life well lived, even if cut short, I’m willing to take that as the legacy he intended.

The 11:59 Bomber

Title: The 11:59 Bomber
Author: Marshall Karp
Published: November 25, 2025 by Blackstone Publishing, Inc.
Format: Kindle, 368 Pages
Genre: Police Procedureal
Series: NYPD Red #8

Blurb: A bomb explodes in a crowded New York subway station at exactly 11:59 a.m. The next day, a second blast rips through a busy department store—again at 11:59.

As the bombs go off with clockwork precision, the death toll climbs and businesses shut their doors as the city hunkers down in fear.

NYPD Red Detectives Kylie MacDonald and Zach Jordan face their most twisted case ever, as they race against the clock in search of one man who has vowed “to destroy New York City the way it destroyed my family.”

My Opinion: It has been over three years since The Murder Sorority hit shelves, and I’ll admit, I’d started to wonder if NYPD Red #8 was ever going to materialize. When The 11:59 Bomber finally appeared, I picked it up “just to see” if I remembered who was who. You know how that goes -- one paragraph becomes one chapter, and suddenly you’re halfway through the book, wondering when you last looked up from the page.

There’s something about this series that has always worked for me. Maybe it’s the humor tucked between the high stakes moments, or the emotional beats that land more often than not. Maybe it’s the trust detectives Kylie MacDonald and Zach Jordan, and the whole high octane RED squad. Whatever that alchemy is, I was genuinely hoping it hadn’t faded during the long gap. Thankfully, the energy remains.

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about this series is the multiple plotlines. For readers, like me, who get restless with straight line storytelling, this is a welcome relief. There’s always another thread to follow, another angle to consider, another moment where you think, “Okay, now this is where the squad shows its strength,” only to realize Karp has a few more turns planned.

By the end, a couple of interpersonal threads are left dangling, not in a frustrating way, but rather as an open invitation. If (or when) Karp decides to pick them back up, I have no doubt the series faithful will be right there, ready to see what the RED squad gets tangled in next. After a three year wait, I’m just relieved the door hasn’t closed on them yet.

Mad Mabel

Title: Mad Mabel
Author: Sally Hepworth
Published: April 21, 2026 by St. Martin's Press
Format: Kindle, 352 Pages
Genre: Thriller

Blurb: There are two kinds of people no one ever expects to be murderers: little girls and old ladies.

Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She's lived on her idyllic street for sixty years—longer than anyone else. Aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else's business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past she's worked exceedingly hard at concealing—because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.

My Opinion: This was my first Sally Hepworth novel, so I went in without any expectations, and honestly, during the first few chapters, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. It dragged for me in a way that would send most readers quietly backing out of the book. I can’t blame them; I was right there too, hovering over the “DNF” button. However, people adore this author, so I kept going, convinced I must have been missing something.

And then the “then/now” structure begins to take effect. The heartbreaking, inevitable next-shoe-drop of Mad Mabel’s story begins to surface, and suddenly the book shifts. You start to see how someone who has never truly been cared for might build their own reality, not out of delusion, but out of sheer survival. It’s the kind of emotional logic that makes sense only when you’ve lived through loneliness long enough to forget what normal feels like.

Mabel herself? She’s not someone you’d invite over for coffee. She’s prickly, caustic, and more than a little abrasive. But that’s just the armor. Underneath is a woman who has been dismissed, judged, and condemned since birth. There are likable characters here, even a “beautiful mind” type who deserves more spotlight, but Mabel’s presence overshadows everyone except Persephone, who quietly holds the entire book together.

And then comes that creeping dread. You see the grooming long before Mabel does. You hope you’re wrong, but deep down you know you’re not. She’s so desperate to belong, to be seen, to be loved, that she walks straight into the arms of someone who recognizes that vulnerability a little too well. The sense of sickness that settles in your stomach is earned, and when the world drops out from under her again, it’s devastating.

But here’s the part I didn’t expect: the twists. What begins as a story of isolation becomes one about found family. The kind that shows up for an 81 year old woman who has never had anyone show up for her before. For the first time in her life, Mabel learns what it means not to be alone.

And those final twists? I was flipping pages like my life depended on it. Everything snaps into place with a kind of precision that made me rethink my early frustration. I’m genuinely glad I didn’t give up on Mabel; she’s had enough people do that already.

And that last line… I just sat there, stunned, mouth open, trying to process what I’d just read.

Dungeon Crawler Carl

Title: Dungeon Crawler Carl
Author: Matt Dinniman
Published: October 2, 2020 by Dandy House
Format: Kindle, 464 Pages
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Dungeon Crawler Carl #1

Blurb: A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.

In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.

The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.

Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.

You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.

You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.

My Opinion: Yes, I fell for the hype and the influence of the book people in my life who insisted Dungeon Crawler Carl was “absolutely my thing.” For the record, I am not the intended demographic here. RPGs have never been part of my world, unless you count watching other people play them while I nod politely and pretend to follow. And yet, somehow, I still found myself giggling my way through Carl and Princess Donut’s increasingly unhinged dungeon adventures.

I’ll be honest: my brain absolutely refused to catalog the endless stream of loot, treasures, and stat boosts they kept accumulating. At some point, I adopted a personal policy of “they’ll have what they need, and if they don’t, they’ll figure it out.” That mindset kept me sane, and frankly, it seems to be working out just fine for them, too.

And Donut. Oh, Donut. Who among us can resist a snarky, self-important, chaos summoning cat with princess energy? She’s a lot, but she’s also the beating heart of the story in a way I didn’t expect.

As the book goes on, you meet humans and creatures who are more than just dungeon fodder. Their backstories sneak up on you with little pockets of hope in a world designed to crush them. And yes, hope is not a strategy, but sometimes it’s the only thing anyone has left. Those moments hit harder than I anticipated.

Now, fair warning: some of the squishier scenes are… well, squishy.

What surprised me most was how much deeper the themes run beneath the jokes, gore, and general absurdity. I went in expecting surface-level chaos and fart humor. Instead, Carl and Donut stumble into questions about group survival versus self-preservation, corporate ownership of human lives, greed, identity erosion, manipulation, the randomness of fate, resilience, ethics, and the strange ways partnership forms under pressure. There’s satire here, yes, but also a surprising amount to unpack if you’re willing to look past the show.

And the parallels to corporate America? Let’s just say the dungeon doesn’t even bother to hide the metaphor. Both systems treat people as expendable resources, constantly shift the rules, and reward performance over substance. The dungeon just makes the satire literal, and somehow, even more pointed.

At first, I had no idea how to rate this book. I wasn’t sure if it was for me or if I was just along for the ride out of curiosity. But as the challenges stacked and Carl and Princess Donut Best in Dungeon (her words, not mine) began to understand what they were truly up against, I found myself appreciating the unexpected depth. Donut may need an audience, but she’s also telling us something real beneath the theatrics. And honestly? I’m here for her.